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Mortal Kombat 11 Switch, first 3rd party game using high GPU speed in handheld mode (See Staff Post)

cucholix

cucholix

Member
Oct 30, 2017
935
There are several speed profiles for GPU, the max speed that a game can use in handheld mode is 460mhz (768mhz is the stock speed in docked mode for comparison) and it has been reserved for first party games only ex BotW, Mario Odissey.

The GPU is officially capped at 460mhz in handheld mode, it can go as fast as 921mhz, obviously the battery strain and heat could kill the system.

Mortal Kombat 11 is the first 3rd party game using 460mhz in handheld mode.

Mod Edit (OP Source):
cucholix said:
I don't own a copy of MK11, someone else tried it and check it was running at 460mhz
I own Breath of The Wild and checking freebird the GPU is set at 460mhz (handheld mode)
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Ganado

Ganado

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Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,177
This sounds weird. So Nintendo handicaps the system for other developers to make their own games look/run better?
 
Hero of Legend

Hero of Legend

Member
Oct 26, 2017
13,653
Curious. What's the general speed in portable mode if 460mhz is the max?

Also, why not allow it to go to 921mhz in docked mode unless the heat would melt it and the dock?
 
GrantDaNasty

GrantDaNasty

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,066
Ganado said:
This sounds weird. So Nintendo handicaps the system for other developers to make their own games look/run better?
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Likely a matter of Nintendo putting in limits because they want to guarantee the battery life is in line with their expectations, and they're not able to keep in check with 3rd parties.

Whether it's the right decision or not, up to devs and players to decide.
 
eyezsac

eyezsac

Member
Oct 27, 2017
88
Yeah, got a source for this? As far as I'm aware the highest the Switch GPU can go is 384Mhz in handheld mode and 307Mhz is the lowest clock available. This Digital Foundry article states it. I've never heard of a Switch game using 460Mhz in any mode before.
 
OP
OP
cucholix

cucholix

Member
Oct 30, 2017
935
jark said:
Yeah, got a source for this? As far as I'm aware the highest the Switch GPU can go is 384Mhz in handheld mode and 307Mhz is the lowest clock available. This Digital Foundry article states it. I've never heard of a Switch game using 460Mhz in any mode before.
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  • 460 → max handheld
  • 384 → official handheld
  • 307 → official handheld
As stated in the OP GPU speed requests are handed by software, BotW for instances use 460mhz in handheld mode.

https://github.com/retronx-team/sys-clk/blob/master/README.md

https://gbatemp.net/threads/retroarch-switch.492920/page-283#post-8582927 <-fourth post
 
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Elfotografoalocado

Elfotografoalocado

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,618
Spain
You sure this is correct, and not a consequence of the overclocking mode? Because this is the first time such a notion is exposed, especially BOTW also running the GPU at 460 MHz. (Although it would explain why BOTW can't go past 900p when docked)
 
LuigiV

LuigiV

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,695
Perth, Australia
For those curious, these are all the performance configs available to Switch devs (source: SwitchBrew.org)
wsUt4en.png


The 460MHz max clock checks out.

Edit: Just read what the OPs source was, so deleted that part. Curious. I don't think Nintendo would restrict third parties from using the mode, I guess Shiver Entertainment is just the first studio that chose to use it, for whatever reason.
 
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Lwill

Lwill

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,629
We need more info on this. Up to this point, we thought that official Switch games were capped at 384/768MHz respectfully. Dock games reaching to 921MHz would also be new info.

Elfotografoalocado said:
You sure this is correct, and not a consequence of the overclocking mode? Because this is the first time such a notion is exposed, especially BOTW also running the GPU at 460 MHz. (Although it would explain why BOTW can't go past 900p when docked)
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True. Interesting stuff if this is what is going on.

Edit: so LuigiV's list doesn't have 921MHz for docked mode available, but certain modes can push the CPU to 1.7GHz?
 
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T002 Tyrant

T002 Tyrant

Member
Nov 8, 2018
9,093
I'm more interested in the CPU boost in docked mode to 1768Mhz in that table. Has that ever been used? Seems a significant boost and I remember DF saying that the CPU usually stays the same!
 
Why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,824
New York City
I'm a little surprised that a couple people consider it scummy toward 3rd parties to not let them use 460, considering that Nintendo only uses it in one game. And now there's one 3rd party game that uses it, too. Plus, we don't know if Nintendo specifically disallowed it, or if 3rd parties just didn't want to use it because of the increased battery drain.

Lwill said:
Dock games reaching to 921MHz would also be new info.
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The OP saying it could go as fast as 921 MHz was probably referring to unofficial overclocks, especially considering the OP also said it would probably overheat the system. Homebrew does allow for some insane overclocking of the Switch nowadays.
 

Deleted member 18161

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Elfotografoalocado said:
You sure this is correct, and not a consequence of the overclocking mode? Because this is the first time such a notion is exposed, especially BOTW also running the GPU at 460 MHz. (Although it would explain why BOTW can't go past 900p when docked)
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I've always personally thought that for BotW it's a memory bandwidth issue more than pure GPU compute power since Switch GPU destroy's the WiiU's GPU in real World performance when you look at other games gaining a 2.25x increase in pixel count going from 720p on WiiU to 1080p on Switch. BotW is also identical visually to the WiiU version outside of the resolution increase.
 
LuigiV

LuigiV

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Member
Oct 27, 2017
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Perth, Australia
T002 Tyrant said:
I'm more interested in the CPU boost in docked mode to 1768Mhz. Has that ever been used? Seems a significant boost and I remember DF saying that the CPU usually stays the same!
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Yeah same. But to keep expectations in check; it's possible those modes are only available on SDEV, like the 1.2GHz modes, but whomever updated the wiki forgot to add that part to the note. However, if it is available to comercial games then it's quite the interesting option, as it would potentially offer games significantly better single threaded performance on Switch than is available on the other current gen consoles (and possibly even outperforming the multithreaded performance of the base systems in certain work loads).
 

Nuclear Muffin

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
Lwill said:
We need more info on this. Up to this point, we thought that official Switch games were capped at 384/768MHz respectfully. Dock games reaching to 921MHz would also be new info.


True. Interesting stuff if this is what is going on.

Edit: so LuigiV's list doesn't have 921MHz for docked mode available, but certain modes can push the CPU to 1.7GHz?
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Nothing uses 921mhz GPU or anything above 1020mhz CPU. 921mhz is just the maximum that people have managed to push the GPU to; and the system is probably running dangerously hot doing so.

I would imagine that 1.7ghz CPU speed would've been prototyped for emulation purposes and in a commercial context, would be reserved only for use by a potential GCN/Wii VC service (and maybe later SEGA AGES releases); as emulation of those systems relies much more so on CPU speed than GPU. So they'd probably bring down the GPU to the lowest supported speed and whack up the CPU to max to take advantage of the thermal savings.
 
Lwill

Lwill

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,629
Rion said:
I've always personally thought that for BotW it's a memory bandwidth issue more than pure GPU compute power since Switch GPU destroy's the WiiU's GPU in real World performance when you look at other games gaining a 2.25x increase in pixel count going from 720p on WiiU to 1080p on Switch. BotW is also identical visually to the WiiU version outside of the resolution increase.
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That was what most of us thought, but BOTW being clocked that high in HH mode and running more than half power of Docked mode would also be a factor.
 
xyla

xyla

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Oct 27, 2017
8,429
Germany
Are there any insights on overclocked switches? Would be interesting to see the resolution and fps on doom and Wolfenstein on them.
 
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